Writing Combat

This is a class I wrote
for an online roleplaying site. While it is
oriented towards that setting, I think the
general thoughts and advice should be applicable
to most fight scenes. At the very least, they
should be applicable to the fantasy genre.

Weapons I: Choosing
a weapon

The
weapon or weapons your character uses will say a
lot about him or her, and there are several
factors you should take into account here.

The first is your
character’s homeland and background. Robert
Jordan spends a lot of time describing (and
differentiating) the outfits, clothing, and
weapons of the various nations in the Wheel of
Time – and if you’re creating your own world,
then it’s a good idea to do the same. This
doesn’t mean that every warrior from a
particular land should be cookie-cutter similar,
but if your character uses something very
different from everyone else he grew up with you
should at least know why. (If you are creating
your own world, then basic historical research
is a good place to start.)

The second consideration is
whether your character is a soldier or a
civilian – or at least, which of the two your
character prefers to look like. After all,
someone who shows up on a horse while carrying a
sword and shield, gives a very different
impression from someone who wears nothing more
than a utility knife and walks into town. Here
are some samples (I’m generalizing, so bear with
me):

Peasant weapons:
Staff, perhaps knife and axe, and possibly bow
(depending on the region). While this is not
true in the Wheel of Time, there are also a
number of historical martial arts that grew up
in areas where the peasants weren’t allowed to
carry weapons. Likewise, there are a number of
effective weapons that can be adapted from
simple agricultural instruments – flails, pole
arms, pitchforks, etc.

Hunter’s weapons:
The bow is the obvious choice here, but don’t
neglect the possibilities of the sling, axe,
hatchet, spear, and knife – generally, anything
which can be used to bring in game can be
adapted for combat as well. Note that the Aiel
fit this description also.

Soldier’s weapons:
Someone who fights as part of an organized
military will generally use a different set of
weapons from someone who comes out of a
tradition emphasizing individual fighting
prowess. Shield use is nearly universal, as is
some form of sword; the basic combination of
sword and shield (when trained for use in
formations) makes for a very solid infantry.
Other popular choices for infantry include pole
arms, pikes, and spears.

Cavalry, on the other
hand, tend to use curved swords, and will be
likely to make use of lances and maces as well.
Bows used from horseback will tend to be small
compared to those used on foot.

Archers, of course, focus on
the bow – but in a military force, that’s seldom
their only weapon. Their swords tend to be
smaller and lighter; there is, in fact, a
variety of shortsword referred to specifically
as the “archer’s short sword”. Shields, like
swords, will tend to be small and light for
archers – if they carry one at all.

Generally, there will be less
variety of weapon designs among professional
soldiers; what they learn will generally be
determined by which part of the army they belong
to, and which nation that army comes from.

Warriors: A
trained, possibly even professional combatant
who does not fight for an organized military
force falls into this category, as does someone
from a martial tradition which emphasizes
personal prowess over group tactics. A warrior
may use almost anything conceivable, including
uncommon weapons, non-military weapons (such as
the rapier) and weapons of his or her own
design. (Because they are primarily concerned
with fighting on their own, their choice of
weapons doesn’t have to work well with anyone
else’s – unlike a soldier, who must be able to
integrate with the rest of his unit.)

Most forms of Dual
Wielding (fighting with a weapon in each hand)
fall into this category; while they’re perfectly
usable one-on-one, they’re not nearly so useful
in formation. (While the Arafellans in the Wheel
of Time are noted as skilled swordsmen – in the
two-sword style – I’m inclined to think that
they’re noted for their skill as individuals.)

Assignment: Discuss your character’s
background and how that affects their choice of
weapons. What does your character’s choice of
weapons say about them? Are they typical or
atypical? (This doesn’t have to be an insanely
long monograph; I’m really just looking for
whether you’re considering you’re character’s
weapons in terms of their background and nation
of origin.)

Weapons II: Their Personalities

In some traditions (okay, well, Chinese is the
only one I’m sure of), weapons are described as
if they had personalities of their own. The jian
flickers like the striking of a snake, while the
staff moves constantly, spinning and reversing.
The Chinese greatsword is a sort of avalanche:
you don’t control it so much as guide its
momentum. A rapier will use careful control and
precise movements, while the katana moves in
broad sweeps and tight slashes.

I don’t necessarily
advocate personifying your weapons, or even
naming them. However, a little work at
characterizing your weapons can go a long way
towards adding depth to your fight scenes.
Choose the words you use with care, and you can
build up a surprisingly clear picture of the
flow of combat without ever providing any
technical detail at all. That said, it also
helps if you know enough to match the right sort
of words to the right sort of weapons. There’ll
be more on that in a later lesson.

Those of you using unarmed
combat can still make use of this trick; just
decide how your fighting style works and what
sort of movements it emphasizes, then choose
words which help build that impression.

You have a choice of two
assignments for this lesson. Either: 1) Tell me what words you use to describe
your character’s weapon (if you are seeking a WS
point, please use the weapon you wish to have
the point awarded for) when it is in use.
Ashfalcon, for example uses a jian, so a
description of his fighting will include a lot
of words like “circling,” “arc,” “thrust,”
“abruptly,” and “sliding.”
2) Pick a fight scene from a movie, and write a
brief description of that. Try to give a good
impression of what the characters are doing,
without focusing on the detail of individual
movements. Naturally, I’ll need to know which
movie you picked.

Describing Combat I:
Internal vs. external, evocative vs. descriptive

Written combats are not all
alike; there are plenty of different things you
can focus on. The more aware you are of the
various possibilities, the more variety you can
add to your fights, and the more you can make
them fit the needs of your story. Here is one
way of classifying fight scenes:

Evocative:
Writing designed to convey a particular feeling
or impression, without necessarily providing a
lot of tangible detail: “Black-veiled figures
fell upon the Fade, spears stabbing.”

Descriptive:
Writing designed to convey precise technical
details: “Riun shifted his stance as he lunged,
turning the Myrdraal’s blade aside with his
buckler with the high block he had learned a
year ago. He thrust with the spear in his right
hand, keeping the point on a low line as he
stabbed into the ninth gate of attack.”

External:
Writing that concerns itself with the physical
world; in fight scenes, writing about the
characters’ actions. “The Halfman appeared out
of the night, its black blade swinging, and Riun
leaped to the attack.”

Internal:
Writing concerned with the thoughts and feelings
of the characters. “I am going to die,
Riun thought. There was no passion behind the
thought, only the calm awareness that to attack
a Shadowman was madness. Still, he could feel
his honor driving him on.”

There is a correlation here,
and you can even draw a little chart if that
sort of thing makes you happy. Evocative and
descriptive writings counterpoint each other, as
do internal and external.

Fight scenes can be
written with a focus on only one of these areas
– depending on the needs of the story, one
approach may be all you need or all you want.
However, as a general rule, if all your fight
scenes fall into only one of these categories,
they’re not going to hold a reader’s attention.
Most should use a combination of these
techniques.

Assignment: Choose a focus or two, and write a
fight scene which emphasizes them. Your response
should be a sentence or two describing what you
intend to do, and one or two paragraphs of
actual fight.

Describing Combat
II: Levels of Detail

Another way of classifying
fight scenes is by the level of detail involved
in them. Not all fights are equally important,
and not all of them deserve the same amount of
the reader’s attention.

The truth of the matter is
that most combats are interesting primarily for
what they tell the reader about the characters
involved – even if that’s only, He’s a really
good fighter, or This guy fights dirty.
There’s nothing wrong with that, but it doesn’t
take a lot of text to get that sort of point
across. (One of my favorite examples of this
comes from Roger Zelazny’s Nine Princes in
Amber: the narrator is following his brother, as
the brother fights his way up a narrow staircase
full of armed men. The fight reads like this:
“For half an hour I watched him, and they died
and they died.”)

The
other reason that fights matter is when they
have emotional importance – if your readers are
caught up in the action and really care about
who wins this conflict. The more the reader
cares about both participants in a fight, the
more attention you’ll need to pay to the scene.

Generally, the more
dramatically important a scene is, the more
detail you’ll want to add. When a character is
surprised, or in danger; when the combatants
have a personal reason to want to damage each
other; when the combat will reveal something,
either about the characters or important to the
characters; when one of the characters will have
an important (usually moral) decision to make.

(A side note: In roleplay,
combat between two player characters will
usually have medium to high levels of detail –
as would a fight between two of the major
characters in a book.)

Let’s take one possible
situation: Our heroine, Jessa, is pursuing a
villain. In so doing, she comes to a bridge and
finds one of the villain’s minions blocking her
way. Both of them have swords out, and combat
begins.

If Jessa’s
opponent is just a minion who has been set to
block her way, little detail is required: “They
faced each other for a moment, sunlight glinting
off drawn blades. The guard moved first, but
Jessa left him clutching the stump of his
sword-hand. Undaunted, she continued across the
bridge.”

If Jessa’s
opponent is closer to her in skill, a moderate
level of detail might be required: “They faced
each other for a moment, sunlight glinting off
drawn blades. Then the guard attacked, a heavy
downward blow designed to split Jessa’s skull.
This one’s good, she thought, as she
parried and stepped aside. She tried a shot at
his leg, but he danced out of the way and came
back strongly. Suddenly, she saw her chance, and
stepped in as he began another of those powerful
overhead swings. She left him kneeling by the
side of the bridge, clutching the stump of his
sword-hand. Undaunted, she continued across the
bridge.”

For a genuine enemy,
someone Jessa knows and hates, you should
probably include even more detail – possibly
including her decision about whether or not to
kill him after she takes his hand.

For this lesson, I’d like
you to write a fight scene in both low and
medium detail. You may either create your own
scene, or borrow one from a film.

Describing Combat
III: Fighting Styles

A well developed character,
in addition to his or her basic personality
traits, will probably have a few small quirks –
little things that make them distinctive: a
tendency to smile at inappropriate moments, or a
preference for tulips instead of roses; a
favorite outfit, or a strong dislike of seafood.
They’re not major plot points, for the most part
– just a way of adding realism and flavor to the
character. The same trick can be used to help
your combats come alive – as your characters are
distinctive, so should their fighting styles be.

One character may circle
constantly when she fights, always changing
directions and never approaching her opponent
directly. Another may charge right in, putting
all his power into every attack. Yet another may
fight defensively, never making the first move.
A fourth might always attempt to disarm an
opponent instead of killing them, while a fifth
may strive for a total economy – using only the
minimum amount of movement that each situation
requires. Characters may be loud or quiet,
talkative or reserved, bold or cautious –
perhaps even overconfident.

Such quirks are often even
more obvious in beginners – one may have trouble
blocking things that come at his head, while
another always falls for a feint. A third might
have trouble blocking strikes that come up from
below. A fourth might hesitate on the attack,
while a fifth makes constant attacks because she
doesn’t trust her skill at defense. As these
characters learn and improve, they may do these
things less and less often, perhaps finding new
quirks to replace them with.

The words you choose will
help to convey this impression. Does your
character block incoming blows? Beat them aside?
Slip past them? Turn them aside? Parry them?
Each term offers different possibilities, and
gives a different impression. If you choose a
collection of words that evoke similar images,
your readers will build their own views of how
your characters fight. (This goes hand in hand
with the previous lesson on characterizing your
weapons.)

Assignment: Describe your character’s fighting
style. If you’re uncertain, try sparring with
someone and see how your character reacts.

Know Your Subject I:
Real Life Training

Oddly enough, actual study of
martial arts is a distinctly mixed blessing –
while it lends a unique and useful perspective
on the subject of unarmed combat (and fighting
in general), it also tends to color your views.
If you aren’t careful, all your characters will
sound like they studied at the same Dojo. As a
general rule, though, if you plan to write a lot
of that sort of combat, studying a martial art
is a good idea. There are some things - issues
of timing and rhythm, for example, and subtle
qualities of movement - that just can't be
taught outside of a class.

From a training perspective,
I really don’t recommend taking lots of
different martial arts. If you’re going to study
one at all, then find a system that suits you
and learn it in depth. However, since people
tend to write what they know (and sometimes to
dismiss things they don’t know as much about),
it’s a good idea to at least look at a few other
styles, maybe talk to some students and
instructors, and see how they present themselves
and how their approaches differ.

Likewise, when you take a
weapons class at the
Grey Tower,
pick up a ruler or a broomstick and see if you
can reproduce what your teacher is trying to
describe. Be careful with this; it’s generally a
good idea to do it outdoors, preferably behind a
tall wooden fence. Otherwise, I’m told, the
neighbors look at you funny.

There’s no assignment for
this one. Just let me know you read it. And if
you want to add comments on what sort of things
you’ve taken, please do.

Know Your Subject
II: Faking It

This lesson is really just
some alternatives for those who – for whatever
reason – cannot study fighting or martial arts.
You’re not out of luck; there are other ways to
add verisimilitude* to your writing… as well as
methods for cheating your way around the things
you don’t know.

First and foremost, as in any writing, research.
I cannot stress this strongly enough. The more
you know about a subject, the better you can
write about it. This is why the WS classes
emphasize technical knowledge. The Warder
Library includes a page of weapon descriptions,
which make a good place to start. There is also
a truly amazing amount of information online; a
little time with a search engine can turn up
information on how to use anything you care to
name. Local libraries are also likely to have
books on various subjects, and even simple
weapons catalogs often include notes on how
things were used.

The other thing you can do is simply avoid
details. Concentrate on Internal or Evocative
writing, and keep the External and Descriptive
elements down to a minimum. As a general rule,
it’s better to have very no details than it is
to have incorrect details.

Another trick – especially
helpful for those with little technical
knowledge – is to write the fight scene
retrospectively. Robert Jordan uses this to good
effect in describing Mat Cauthon’s fight with
Couladin: we, as readers, never actually see the
fight. All we actually get to see is Mat sitting
around afterwards and reflecting on the way the
battle had gone. This is also a good technique
if the details of the fight are not important –
if, for example, the fight is only important for
its effect on the characters involved. Like any
other technique, beware of using this one too
often.

A similar
trick is to have the fight take place offstage,
as it were. Your characters need not remember
every little detail of a fight… or even any
details at all. “I saw his fist coming at me,
and I blocked. After that, everything was a
blur; the next thing I remember is staggering
home with a split lip and bruised ribs.” This is
especially appropriate if the character was
surprised, or drunk, when the fight began.

Lastly, you can do what
Robert Jordan has done with the sword in the
Wheel of Time books: make up a set of
neat-sounding names for some techniques, and
maybe add some notes on how they’re used. Then,
instead of trying to describe a particular
motion, you can just say something like, “Jalian
attacked with The Scorpion’s Tale, then spun
away as his opponent countered with a technique
from Wolf On The Hunt.”

Your assignment for this
lesson is find a webpage or other reference
which describes the way your weapon is used. If
you used any interesting or unusual search
techniques, I’d like to know what they are.
Research really is the most important part of
this lesson.

*Verisimilitude is the quality of seeming true –
in this context, the little details that add
realism to your writing.

Writing Combat I:
The Opponent

Probably the hardest thing to
do when writing combat is to have the bad guys
respond in believable ways. It’s important to
consider not only what your character would do,
but also what your opponents would do. When
confronted with a master swordsman, town guards
with a strong sense of duty might be expected to
ignore the casualties and keep attacking.
Bandits in the wilderness, on the other hand,
would probably run after the first few
casualties. Someone who finds themselves in a
fight where they’re clearly overmatched usually
won’t just keep at it until they get killed;
plenty of other options – including retreat,
surrender, begging for mercy, and playing dead –
are available. Expect your Bad Guys to shout for
help if they need it, raise alarms, hide behind
the furniture…

This sort of thing needn’t
spoil your fight scene, either. If your
character engages an inferior opponent, who
throws down his blade and begs for mercy, then
you’ve moved out of combat and into character
development. Your character has still won (even
if it isn’t as satisfying a victory as taking
someone down outright); as a bonus, now we get
to find out more about what kind of person your
character is.

The
assignment for this one is relatively simple:
write a short fight scene (a couple of
paragraphs) from the perspective of your
opponent.

Writing Combat II: Large Battles

Large battles present their
own problems for a writer – primary among these,
the fact that there’s simply too much going on
to cover all the details. There are several ways
of dealing with this.

One is to take a wide
angle – to cover the progress of the battle as a
whole. Describe the movements of armies, the
rallying of forces, the employment of different
bodies of troops. Essentially, this treats each
army as if it were a single opponent. Once
again, research is your friend here – the more
you know of military theory, the better you can
write this sort of scene.

Another is to take a narrow
view – follow the progress of a particular
character or group of characters through the
battle. This leaves the reader without any real
feel for the progress of the battle as whole
(which may be your intention), and focuses
instead on its effects on the characters.

Or, you can go back and
forth – shifting from the overall progress of
the battle to the exploits of certain characters
and back. This provides a more balanced view,
but sometimes you don’t want that – you want to
keep the detail level down, or you want the
reader to wait (with the characters) until after
the battle is over to find out who won.

Assignment: I can’t think
of an assignment for this lesson that wouldn’t
be prohibitively long. If you have an idea that
sounds workable, please let me know. In the
meantime, just post and let me know you read
this one.

Interactive Writing:
Sparring and Co-authoring

Writing a two-player combat –
where each player controls one of the
contestants – is an exercise not only of your
writing skills, but also of your social skills.
The usual rules of online courtesy apply doubly
in this sort of situation.

As a general rule, this
sort of writing will have a high level of
detail, and will focus more on the descriptive
than the evocative. That said, it’s easy to get
too descriptive, and create a situation where
your opponent/co-author gets lost in the
details. A good mixture of internal and external
writing is also recommended. Try, as best you
can, to match your partner’s writing style in
these areas.

I
mentioned the etiquette of online roleplay
already, but let me emphasize a couple of
points:

Do not attempt to
control your partner’s character. This is
important, and – although the specifics of what
is and isn’t acceptable may vary a little from
one site to another – nearly universal. It’s
okay to say, “Urok swung his axe around, a
massive blow that usually felled opponents like
trees. With luck, it would drive Kalen back,
cornering him.” It’s not okay to say, “Urok
swung his axe around, chopping Kalen’s
quarterstaff in two and forcing him into the
corner.”

Make
your posts open-ended. In other words, leave
your opponent with some options. Give him or her
something to work with. You may be surprised by
what they come up with. This also means that you
should include enough information for the combat
to continue. If your opponent describes an
elegant combination of two sweeping blows
followed by a stab, and you respond with, “Kalen
grunted as he blocked Urok’s blade,” then you
haven’t given your co-author enough information
to continue. As a rule of thumb, each of your
posts should include a response to your
opponent’s attack (parry, dodge, stop-cut,
whatever), and an attack of your own. There are,
of course, exceptions.

Nobody is invincible.
If you play a master swordsman, and some novice
comes up with a weird-but-effective move that
you think would take your character off guard…
let it hit. Don’t worry too much about what
should happen, and don’t let your ego tangle you
up.

Communicate. Email
is your friend. If you don’t understand what
your opponent just did, ask them to clarify. If
you’re doing something that is supposed to
produce a particular result, let them know. If
you’re having trouble because they’re writing a
fight from the perspective how their character
feels, and you’re writing about what your
character does, ask them to include more
physical detail. Before you even start, let your
partner know what sort of piece you will be
writing together.

Above all, be polite.

Assignment: Find a partner
– preferably someone who is also taking this
class – and spar with them in character. I’d
like to see at least three posts from each of
you.

Conclusion

That’s pretty much it. I hope you’ve enjoyed the
class. Even more, I hope you’ve gotten something
useful out of it. If you have any thoughts or
suggestions, please feel free to
email me.